MUSIC REVIEW : Symphony’s Fireworks Up in the Air

The Pacific Symphony played the final concert of its Summer Series at the Irvine Meadows Amphitheatre Saturday night. Fireworks exploded into the balmy air, cannon roared and 10,909 partisans gorged themselves with evident delight on a Tchaikovsky program. Unfortunately, in musical terms, the evening was largely a disappointment.

Sabotaged by a sound system that made the orchestra sound like it was playing on a frequency-poor AM radio station--and led by Zuohuang Chen, who swooped and swayed as if he were trying out for the conducting Olympics--the symphony sounded thin, frequently played out of tune, and generally gave the impression of a band of musicians fighting for their lives.

In the Violin Concerto, however, soloist Mark Kaplan was undeterred. Though the amplification often made his instrument sound bigger than the entire orchestra, he played with such nervous intensity and intellectual integrity that, in the first movement at least, he raised the overplayed warhorse to the level of respectability.

Kaplan handled the pyrotechnics leading up to the first-movement cadenza and the cadenza itself with as much elegance and virtuosity as it was possible to imagine under such adverse circumstances.

Things deteriorated afterward, though. The last movement was mostly a scramble. Kaplan even missed his last note.

From the program opener, a scrappy performance of the Cossack Dance from “Mazeppa,” it was evident that Chen, principal conductor of the Central Philharmonic in Beijing and music director of the Wichita Symphony, had the flashy choreographic moves to impress the audience but lacked the ability to communicate effectively with the players.

After intermission the sound system improved a bit and the orchestra provided competent run-throughs of the “Romeo and Juliet” Fantasy-Overture, the Elegy movement from the Third Suite and, concluding matters with the obligatory bang, the “1812” Overture.